Debt-ridden hospitals aim to keep jobs
11:10am Thursday 18th May 2006
Bosses at Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust claim no more than a handful of permanent staff will lose their jobs, as it tries to save £25 million to balance its books.
At the trust board's quarterly meeting last Thursday, finance director Alan Levett revealed that the trust estimates that staff reductions of approximately 320 would be required to eliminate the underlying deficit' of £25.1m.
But he said: "That would amount to eight per cent of the total workforce. You can't take 320 people away without destabilising services in a fundamental way."
The trust has already identified £13.8m worth of savings from this year's budget and another £12m for 2007-08.
But this does not take into account its massive historic debt, which it plans to start repaying in 2008 when it is expected to be close to £30m.
Harbhajan Singh Brar, director of strategic recovery, said the trust was trying to identify how much it could save by cutting 194 temporary posts.
"If there are permanent job losses, it will be no more than a handful and this is not the route we are going down," he said."We will be looking at how we can move staff around a permanent member of staff provides continuity of care."
In 2003-04, temporary staff cost the trust £11m, which was reduced to £6m by 2005-06.
"There are now plans to bring that down even further in the long-term we would like to get it down to nil, but there are some areas where we will have to go outside to fill posts," Mr Singh Brar.
The trust is hoping to decrease the number of full-time posts from 4,135 to 3,992, although it currently only has 3,708 of these positions filled with permanent staff.
"We are trying to fill full-time posts to be able to shed temporary posts."
u Fiona McLeod, one of the five non-executive directors of the trust, resigned on Thursday, saying had concerns about the financial monitoring and management arrangements within the trust.
She said: "I am not satisfied ... that the trust will achieve its clinical targets and meet the break-even duty over the requisite period."
But Mr Singh Brar said he was disappointed that Ms McLeod had resigned without seeing the trust's turnaround' financial plan and added that weekly, fortnightly and monthly meetings are held to discuss each its finances in detail.